'When Russia did democracy - from St Vladimir to Tsar Putin'
Author: Kenneth Macinnes
Publisher: Amberley Publishing Gloucestershire / 2023
Pages: 296
I have just seen a wonderful YouTube video about the Volga Delta on Russia. The video is long but extremely interesting. It shows nature at its best in glorious colour and with a text that is far from being scholarly and textbook dry.
There is so much to say about Russia, from nature to art but perhaps not so much about history, especially in the wrong hands. This book is a case in point. This carefully-produced book was produced in Malta, although it does not say so at any stage. Yet I was told so by the friend who gave me the copy and told me details about its production in Malta. I see no reason why I am to disbelieve him.
Then when I tried to get more information about its author I found more details that tallied. A fascinated witness of Russian politics, the blurb tells us, the author, Kenneth Macinnes, lived in the country through some of the events he describes.
His book not only chronicles the 10 years he was in Russia but also describes the other times in history when "Russia led the world in democratic freedoms and popular representation".
"During the Middle Ages, the Republic of Novgorod was the world's largest democracy. The national parliament, established by Ivan the Terrible, elected tsars while the Russian Empire was the first place in Europe where women voted in local and national elections. In 1917 the Provisional Government passed the free electoral law ever written.
"The book describes how Lenin and Stalin stood in democratic elections, the day Yeltsin's tanks bombarded Parliament, and why Putin has such a deep aversion to free ballots."
Goodreads informs us that Macinnes lived and worked in Russia in the times of Gorbachev and Yeltsin and was employed by the Russian State Museum. He published some 450 books including translations of George Orwell.
He was involved in a trial against the museum authorities. Back in the UK he was employed by the British Parliament. His most popular books are about Russian history in the 18th to 20th centuries.
We are living in years marked by two terrible wars - the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the war between Israel and Hamas. The war in Ukraine is by far the most unjust, inflicting a terrible price on its people who bear this suffering through no fault of their own. It shows a Russia quite unlike the democracy-loving Russia described by this book. A Russia quite ready to suffer one million dead than admit it's wrong. A Russia quite ready to be isolated from the rest of the world than stop the carnage. A Russia that stops at nothing, that targets schools, hospitals, supermarkets, train stations, and so on. A Russia that as this book shows, practises disinformation on an industrial scale.
It's a pity that someone in Malta allowed himself to be used in this disinformation.